A surprisingly calm and peaceful night. At one point I dreamed of an information video that featured a clown dancing with his arms wide in a forest of dark monoliths; the floor an ash. The camera moved up and the clown became a black outline of a man on a white background, then many men, then, as we moved further away, the tiny black dots formed the shape of an ear, then a face. So, coronavirus is a clown. A joke, or a part of the psyche like my up-and-coming clown poems.
I feel guilty at my anxiety yesterday, penitent to my poor cells and body for the unnecessary stress. I was careful to thank the part of my mind for warning me of potential danger, for keeping me safe, and that their message is acknowledged. This is an important part of removing worry.
My peace came from several strands. Firstly, I was worried that I might be infectious somehow invisibly. This is my main worry generally. I care less about getting coronavirus myself, more about passing it on. It appears that the World Health Organisation consider it highly unlikely that anyone without symptoms can pass it on, and I feel healthy, I definitely don't have symptoms. Even my recent sniffles are now, joyously, at last gone completely.
Secondly, I reasoned that there is a reasonable chance that nobody in Crewe or Nantwich has coronavirus at all. London, the news said, is 'weeks ahead' of the rest of the country. Cheshire is one of the lowest places of incidence in the country, and even then the bigger towns of Macclesfield, Warrington, and Chester are far more likely to contain cases. Now that the country is in near lock-down, anyone who might have it will almost certainly be staying in too.
Thirdly, I started to care less if I did get coronavirus. What can we fear from the natural course of things? I realised the ironic injusice that the young, fit, hard working, and most productive in society were being asked to face financial ruin to save the old, unfit and unproductive, and financially secure. If inequality was a social problem in 2019, it will really become one in future.
The wheels of the country and economy are grinding, inexorably, to a halt. A friend is now unemployed indefinitely. A quarter of my life savings have vanished into smoke this week. I heard that there were two suicides on the railway yesterday. Shops are starting to shudder into sleep.
